After fifteen years of vaporware limbo, Duke Nukem Forever finally hit consoles earlier this month to a near universal critical drubbing. If you were afraid that Mac gamers were going to miss out on one of the most poorly reviewed games of the year, though, don’t worry: Duke’s coming to the Mac!

Aspyr announced on its blog that Duke Nukem Forever will be making its way to the Mac in August in the sequel to the classic Duke Nukem 3D — first released back in 1996. The game will be available through Steam and will be priced to match the PC version at $50, with 10% off for pre-orders:

Aspry Media has been recruited by Duke himself to spread his awesomeness to the world, as Duke Nukem Forever will be hitting Macs this August. Duke Nukem Forever brings you ass-kicking of epic proportions, massive guns with equally massive explosions, and, of course, babes. This is pure unadulterated Duke that we all know and love.

Before we let you rush to blow $50 on Duke Nukem Forever, however, our conscience must point you towards some of the title’s less than glowing reviews, which emphasize the game’s bad, repetitive gags, slow loading times, and lacklustre gameplay.

You will die, frequently, and often after only 30 seconds or so of action … And you then have to wait some 45 seconds or so to have another go. If you think the Duke’s pissed off, see how you feel after 20 minutes of that.

If this was 15 years in the making, it makes you wonder what they did for the other 14 years and 10 months.

That Duke Nukem Forever looks dated, has framerate issues and long load times on Xbox 360 maybe shouldn’t be surprising, and though the grinding guitar music is entirely appropriate considering the subject matter, it’s not catchy enough to stick in your head. Aside from serving as an end point to an overlong development cycle, there’s nothing remarkable about Duke Nukem’s return.

And finally, Gamespot believes the return of Duke is nothing short of an embarrassment:

So this is what we’ve been waiting for, it seems: a tedious and unattractive sci-fi shooter that would quickly hit the bargain bin if it weren’t called Duke Nukem Forever. Duke may be an icon, but he’s just going through the motions in this stitched-together collection of poorly paced levels, which do the unimaginable: they make Duke boring.

Fans of the classic Duke Nukem games are guaranteed disappointment, so if you want to preserve your love for Duke, do yourself a favour and re-play one of the classics instead. For the morbidly curious, however, expect to see Duke Nukem Forever hit store shelves in August.

Editorial: Headline refers to an actual line of spoken dialogue in Duke Nukem.

You’re right. Shit jokes aren’t funny. That’s the point: that’s an ACTUAL LINE OF DIALOGUE FROM THIS TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE GAME. Given how bad Duke Nukem Forever is, it’s the most apropos headline we can think of.

reactor1

Duke Nukem Forever isn’t that bad if you treat it like any other retro game which was intended for the audience about 12-years ago. I am enjoy playing it and a lot of these reviews are way exaggerated with false info. I only died when I made a dumb move and load times are like 5 to 8 seconds at most.

I may be wrong but it seems most of the negative reviews/opinions are form gamers who most likely were in diapers when Duke Nukem 3D hit PCs way back in the nineties. DN 3D was one of the pioneer FPS video games setting the standard and also created some of the first controversies for games with its raunchy content at that time. Is it the best FPS game based on today’s standards? No, not even close. Is it playable and enjoyable for some retro-gamers, for sure!

About the author

Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.

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